“Twist'n frugg in an arrogant
gesture”:

Frank
Zappa and the musical-theatrical gesture

Paul Carr

Principal Lecturer in popular music, University of
Glamorgan, Wales

Richard J. Hand

Professor of theatre and media drama, University of
Glamorgan, Wales

Introduction

Frank Zappa’s ability to fuse diverse styles into a unifying
idiolect, make him a fascinating case study in intertextuality.
Zappa’s work not only represents an extraordinary confluence
of styles that was profoundly ironic in nature, but a prolonged and
considered interchange of musical traditions. These gestures
represented the beginning of a long-term unwritten contract Zappa
forged with his audience, which presented him with an unparalleled
amount of artistic freedom. Additionally, Zappa’s concerts
achieved a legendarily theatrical status in which dramatic gesture was
immensely important. This essay is concerned with examining how a
multitude of musical and theatrical gestures influence the
implementation and interpretation of Frank Zappa’s music, and
hopes to present an explanation into the processes that underlie his
complex multifaceted performances and recordings. How and why was
Zappa’s music described as rock despite its numerous
incongruous influences? How and why were the more
“serious” aspects of his music usually juxtaposed
with humour and frivolity? How and why did “non
musical” gestures such as comic and absurdist theatricality
in performance, dress code, album packaging, concert promotion, and
political views influence the way his music was received? Throughout
this essay, the word gesture will be used to describe any artistic
activity that communicates “meaning” between Zappa
himself and an external source. These paradigms range from the
innovative “conduction” techniques Zappa employed
on both musicians and audience, to the stylistic parameters of his
music, to the often “absurdist” theatricality of
his stage shows.

Early Years

When Frank Zappa arrived on the international music
scene in the
mid-1960s, he had already been working as a professional musician since
leaving high school in 1958, gaining experience as a jobbing musician,
film composer, studio owner, and songwriter. Early demo recordings of
his pre-Mothers of Invention work portray a musician heavily influenced
by the blues, doo-wop, orchestral arranging, and comedy theatre, but
yet to find his unique artistic voice. Although he had not discovered a
methodology to fuse these musical and theatrical gestures into a
consistent idiolect, the combination of influences is already unique,
and are recognisable contributors toward his mature style: evidence of
this can be found in Mystery Disk (1998), a compilation of the very
earliest Zappa recordings. Commencing on drums and changing to guitar
at age fifteen, Zappa’s musical interests reach far beyond
the rhythm & blues bands of his youth, almost developing an
alter ego compulsion for twentieth-century classical music, especially
the work of Edgard Varèse. Particularly interested in
Varèse’s concept of music as “organised
noise”, the influence remained consistent throughout his
entire career, and appears to provide a major contribution toward his
approach to live and studio work, as well as the numerous styles he was
to engage with.

By the time Zappa released his debut album Freak Out in
1966, he had already elaborated upon these paradigms considerably.
Stylistic gestures such as sarcastic anti establishment lyrics
(“Mr America”), tape splicing (At 2.01 of
“Who Are The Brain Police”), doo-wop influenced
vocals (“Go Cry On Somebody Else’s
Shoulder”), classical orchestration (“How Could I
Be Such A Fool” and “You Didn’t Try To
Call Me”), rhythm & blues influenced grooves
(“Trouble Every Day”), and humorously complex
thematic material (“You’re Probably Wondering Why
I’m Here”) can all be diachronically traced from
this point throughout his entire anthology, gradually becoming more
intertextually and idiolectically consistent. The second half of the
album subtlety introduces less commercial, more experimental works,
including fusions of musique concrète and rock such as
“The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” and
“Help I’m A Rock”. Such works present
early examples of the unclassifiable stylistic fusion Zappa was to
develop over the forthcoming years.

Zappa’s Sustained but Uneasy Interface with
High and Low
Culture

Zappa’s “Rock Star” persona appears to
play a substantial part in informing his audience how to indexically
categorise his work. Certainly throughout his early career, Zappa
seemed to calculatedly utilise the archetypal clichés of the
Rock tradition to compartmentalise his work into as lucrative a
direction as possible. How would compositions such as “The
Son of Monster Magnet”, “Help I’m a
Rock”, and the Kagel influenced “It Can’t
Happen Here” (Zappa 1966) be interpreted without the dress
code, eccentric behaviour, and of course idiosyncratic electric guitar
playing of Frank Zappa? Although often dismissing both the industry and
consumer as cynical exploiters and ignorant fools respectively, he was
in fact highly skilled at manipulating both institutions to his own
means. For example, he appeared to have no conscience when utilising
“cheap” publicity – such as appearing as
a celebrity guest on television game shows – to help
publicise his “product”; yet we are discussing the
same figure whose 1984 recording The
Perfect Stranger with Pierre
Boulez resulted in Zappa being the only American composer aside from
Elliot Carter that the great conductor dedicated an entire album to.
Such seeming tautologies accentuate Zappa’s sometimes
confusing and uneasy relationship with both high and low culture.
However, Kevin Courrier arguably sees this as Zappa’s
grandest, iconoclastic gesture:

Frank Zappa brought to popular music a desire
to break down the
boundaries between high and low culture. He presented musical history
through the kaleidoscopic lens of social satire, then turned it into
farce. This potent mixture upset many listeners who wanted to cling to
a safer, more romantic view of art as something morally and spiritually
edifying. (Courrier, 2002: 10).

In performance too, Zappa can be seen to align the
gesturing of high
and low culture. A live performance of “Peaches en
Regalia” taken from a 1979 television broadcast of Saturday
Night Live provides an indicative example (Zappa 2004).
Although this
piece is known as one of his “Jazz Rock” works in
terms of musicological content, the accompanying frivolity of the band
performance and image of the performers seem to detract from the
seriousness of this genre, being far more cogent with rock. It is as
though Zappa is aware that the piece would not be suitable for
mainstream television without the additional commercialised dimension
of rock performance authenticity, the frivolity almost acting as a
safeguard against anyone potentially questioning his Jazz-Rock
pretensions. Toward the end of the piece, almost in an attempt to
substantiate the credibility of the work, and the symbiotic
interrelationship of its styles, Zappa performs an archetypal Rock
“arm spin” gesture, which is reminiscent of the
“Rock God” gesticulations of Pete Townsend.
However, this movement is somewhat neutralised by immediately leading
the band in the manner of a symphonic conductor, clearly alluding that
this piece is not only “light entertainment” but
also high art
conceived by an imaginative, and above all serious
composer. Although this performance took place in 1979, Zappa had been
incorporating conducting techniques such as this since the mid 1960s.
His conducting of the band not only alluded to his dominant
hierarchical position as composer within the Mothers of Invention,
but
also the artistic merit of his music, and as Susan Fast pointed out
when analysing the use of Jimmy Page’s use of the violin bow
on guitar – a ‘quest for virtuosity’
(Fast, 2001: 38). Zappa’s conducting also demonstrated a
range of complex, principally “indexical” related
hand signals that according to him enabled the realisation of his
recorded experiments with musique concrète in a live
environment (Slaven, 2003: 175). Indeed, Zappa had a very traditional
perspective of a musician’s role in the formulation of music,
stating “Music comes from composers – not
musicians. Composers think it up; musicians perform it”
(Zappa, 1989: 174).

Ex-Zappa sideman Tommy Mars estimated that on a single
tour, the
members
of his band would have to understand and interpret between fifteen to
twenty hand signals, all of which could subtly or drastically alter the
direction of a given piece (Murray 2004). Although these signals
continue a tradition within the popular music canon established by
bandleaders such as Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus (Watson 2000),
Zappa’s precise incorporation of these gestures appears to be
totally unique. A composition that had been explicably scored and
rehearsed could be drastically changed spontaneously by the
implementation of specific hand signals, as Zappa reveals in his
autobiography:

[If I twirl] my fingers as if I’m
piddling
with a Rasta braid
on the right side of my head – that means: “Play
Reggae.” If I pretend to twirl braids on both sides of my
head, it means: “Play ska” (…) If I want
something played “heavy metal,” I put both hands
near my crotch and do “Big Balls” (Zappa, 1989:
167).

If these movements instigated a shift in musical style,
Zappa also used
gestures such as raised eyebrows, iconic key shapes with fingers, and
hand-based amplitude variations, all of which triggered predetermined
environments, harmonic structures, styles, time signatures,
modulations, melodies, textures, or behavioural patterns. When
discussing Zappa’s implementation of these techniques, even
when working with classically trained musicians, Ekman states:

He was renowned for training his rock and roll
bands to
respond
instantaneously to a variety of signals thereby enabling a spontaneous
interaction with unpredictable events during a concert. This concept of
course is entirely foreign to the controlled environment of the
conventional classical music concert. I think Frank was intrigued by
what could be achieved by bringing this propensity toward spontaneous
interaction to classically trained musicians (Ekman 2000).

An example
of this “propensity” can be heard in the
posthumously released “Jolly Good Fellow” (Zappa
1999). Although clearly a “free” improvisation, it
has a unified thematic structure that enables it to sound like a composition,
bearing witness to Zappa’s ability to creatively
and spontaneously manipulate even large groups of musicians like a
musical instrument. Despite its improvised nature, the whole piece is
founded upon a single chromatic motif, which gradually, and in typical
Zappa style humorously elaborates as the piece progresses. The motif is
conversational in nature, sometimes being performed by a single
instrument (For example at the start), but also played in unison and
contrapuntally (For example between 0.30 – 0.40 and 1.15 and
1.39). Musical characteristics of the motif are engrained with
melancholy and mischievousness, and are given an added dimension by
subtle variety of timbre, texture, phrase length (via the use of
diminution and augmentation), vibrato and note duration. This overt
incorporation of narrative is typical throughout Zappa’s
career, and this piece clearly depicts conversational allusions, whose
activities and attitudes develop in time and space. The use of the
Theremin punctuates the piece with another pervasive theme from the
Zappa archives, alluding to the (cheap) science fiction of his never to
be realised Hunchentoot,
in addition to Joe’s
Garage (1979)
and “Cheapness” (Zappa 1974b) As indicated above,
throughout “Jolly Good Fellow” (Zappa is clearly
using the cohort as a compositional tool, spontaneously documenting a
profound work of art in the style not dissimilar to the expressionist
painter Jackson Pollock. Calling the technique
“conduction”, Zappa himself regarded it as a means
to “draw ‘designs’ in the nowhere
– with a stick, or with your hands – which are
interpreted as ‘instructional messages’ by guys
wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing” (Zappa, 1989:
176). It in fact represents a living testimony to the famous Zappa
maxim – “Anything, Any Time, Anywhere –
for No Reason at All” (Zappa, 1989: 163).

As well as communicating subliminal messages to the
audience regarding
the artistic importance of his music, musical information to his band
concerning the stylistic and textural nature of a work, and providing
an exceptional creative medium for himself, these signals were also
incredibly dramatic in nature, and could even be applied to individual
band members and audiences, creating theatrical set pieces. In the 1968
Royal Albert Hall concert, which featured fourteen members of the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, the Mothers’ keyboardist Don Preston
suddenly transformed, Jekyll and Hyde style, into Dom De Wild, a
rampaging hunchback monster who enacted a microcosmic melodrama while
bass player Roy Estrada emerged as a Mexican Pope wearing metal breasts
who distributed contraceptives to the audience by the handful (social
satire meets Theatre of the Absurd). Ensemble set pieces include the
remarkable performance of “Approximate” (documented
in the Dub Room Special
DVD, 2006) which provides a full spectrum of
performance and theatrical gesture: that is to say, the same theme is
played by the assembled six-piece band first with their instruments,
then through their voices, then through mime, and finally through the
medium of dance. When it came to the audience, Zappa would hold
impromptu dance, singing or “sex noise” contests,
and as discussed later in the essay would regularly integrate the
participants into his works of art. The Mothers’ performances
at the Garrick Theatre in New York City in 1967 were extraordinary
theatrical and explored a constant interplay between performer and
audience: as well as encouraging audience participation in the event,
the performances had regular key players such as a large stuffed
giraffe which, when massaged by a frog puppet, would squirt whipped
cream over the audience. But it was not just gestures of absurdist
frivolity at the Garrick. One of the most problematic yet fascinating
incidents of Zappa’s relationship with audience occurred in
the summer of 1967. The Vietnam War – and the protest against
it – was at his height and three marines arrived at the
Garrick. Far from looking for trouble, the marines joined in the
performance, singing and expressing anti-war sentiments and gestures
that were certainly treasonable. The audience loved it, but when Zappa,
in a provocative gesture, tossed the marines a doll and told them
demonstrate how they would kill a “gook baby”: they
did with unbridled ferocity and the concert itself was killed dead.
Zappa later claimed in an interview that in these shocking and
alienating moments just as much as in the surrealistic humour,
“We were carrying on the forgotten tradition of Dada
stagecraft. The more absurd, the better I liked it.” (Quoted
in Courrier, 2002: 125). Incidentally, the published interview was yet
another example of Zappa’s postmodern confluence of high and
low art, as it is probably the only time that Dada has been discussed
in the pages of Playboy
magazine.

Although these gestures were comprehensively understood
by his
employees as a communicative medium, through which Zappa could
instantaneously alter numerous parameters of a given performance, and
by his audience as ironic and/or strategic
anti essentialist[1]
tendencies
of his character, they are also clear examples of a two-way process
outlined by Tagg:

Gestural interconversion entails…
both the
projection of an
external emotion via an appropriate gesture on to an external object
and the emotional and corporeal internalisation or appropriation of an
external object through the medium of a gesture corresponding in some
way to the form, shape, movement, grain, density, viscosity, etc. of
those objects. (Tagg, 2003: 254).

Zappa in fact developed a whole range
of physical and musical gestures that initially had semantic meaning to
him, and eventually became learned responses for his musicians and
audiences. Although Zappa’s use of conduction, and diverse
stylistic palette were instigated to enable him to implement and
control his creative environment, it had the effect of signifying
important social and cultural information to his audience. Even though
the image and sounds of “Peaches en Regalia” may be
aligned to rock and jazz paradigms, the aforementioned conducting
gesture is associated with high
art, and implies elevated degrees of
musical literacy from both the musicians and audience. Amidst the same
production, Zappa took this procedure a stage further by actually
conducting the band from a podium, complete with musical score and
baton, and during “I’m The Slime” played
the role of a school teacher, attempting to teach the American public
his political convictions by highlighting the song’s lyrics
on a flip chart. The sociological and cultural implications of the
aforementioned “high art” gestalt is in congruence
with Zappa’s conception of the composers’ dominant
hierarchical position over the orchestra, and when combined with
advanced musicological techniques such as serialism, classical
orchestration, and complex time signatures, has a profound subliminal
effect on the interpretation of his music. Interestingly, these factors
sharply contradict with the indexical rock signifiers of his album
packaging, public image, concert promotion, and guitar solos, the
combination of which instigates a series of dichotomies in the mindset
of the audience. Is the music Rock, Jazz or Classical? High or low art?
Controlled or open? Improvisatory or notated? Serious or frivolous?
Complex or simple? Elitist or vernacular?

Complexity of Style and Integration of
Tradition

Although his musical and physical presence often
portrays all of the
dichotomies outlined above, his rock-founded persona and reception is
always intact, and can be described with Bakhtin’s notion of centripetal
and centrifugal
forces. When discussing similar paradigms
in the work of Neil Young, Echard stipulates that “it makes
sense to cast rock
as the over-arching category, exerting a centripetal
pull on its various sub-traditions, and to cast the subtraditions
– for example punk, rockabilly, country and blues –
as the particular, destabilizing forces” (Echard, 2005: 62).
This is also true for Frank Zappa, who calculatedly managed the balance
of these “destabilising forces” in his music
throughout his career, in effect both evading and relying on the
material he engages with (Echard, 2005: 76). Although Zappa’s
centrifugal
gestures did regularly move in the direction of the subtraditions
of rock – for example “Love of My
Life” (Mothers of Invention 1968) (doo-wop) and
“Louise has Messed My Mind Up” (Zappa 1979)
(Reggae) – his pervasive engagement with music outside of the
tradition has a more profound effect on the reception of his music, and
the stylistic balance
outlined above.

It is proposed that
Zappa’s long-term relationship with contemporary classical
music appears to be not just a juxtaposition of style, but eventually
became a confluence of traditions[2].
Analysis of much of
Zappa’s portfolio reveals a consistency when experimenting
with classical and rock styles, and this factor seems to be largely
responsible for the erratic genre labelling his music often receives.
When discussing the “classical” influences inherent
in his early portfolio he verifies a clear intention to gradually
educate his audience into comprehending his more
“inaccessible” future efforts, stating –
“Stravinsky in rock n’ roll is like a
get-acquainted offer… It’s a gradual progression
to bring in my own ‘serious’ music”
(Slaven, 2003: 82). This statement verifies the fact that Zappa
explicitly but subtly integrated classical
gestures into his early
portfolio, gradually increasing the propensity of the statements in
individual compositions, and eventually albums. Examples of his early
practice include “puns” that allude to classical
titles (such as “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young
Pumpkin” (Mothers of Invention 1967), and “Prelude
to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” (Zappa
1970)); direct quotations from the canon (“Fountain of
Love” (Mothers of Invention 1968) includes a quote from the
opening theme of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring),
written
acknowledgement of relevant influences (Freak Out (1966)
includes a
substantial list of his major influences, including Boulez, Kagel,
Schoenberg, Varèse, and Stravinsky amongst many others );
and compositional intent (Absolutely
Free (1967) was considered to be
two oratorios, and included a “mini rock opera”:
“Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”). In 1967
Zappa took this process a stage further, by interspersing Lumpy Gravy
(1967) – which makes extensive use of an orchestra
– between the more centripetal
rock forces of Absolutely
Free
(1967) and We’re
Only in it for the Money (1968), a process
he was to repeat with Orchestral
Favourites (1979) – produced
between Sheik Yerbouti
(1979) and Joe’s
Garage Act I (1979)
– and London
Symphony Orchestra Volume 1 (1983), produced
between The Man from
Utopia (1983) and Them
or Us (1984). Toward the
end of his life, Zappa’s most profound centrifugal gesture
was to ensure that his final three albums – Ahead of Their
Time (1993), The
Yellow Shark (1993) and Civilization Phase 3
(1995)
– were all, to varying degrees, orchestral in nature. Despite
the indisputable musicological paradigms of the above, it is apparent
that audio qualities alone are not enough to classify the stylistic
qualities of any musical work, and when discussing the stylistic
ambiguity of Zappa’s portfolio, Gracyk comments

When Frank Zappa puts an instrumental track on
his
albums,
it’s rock music even if we recognise its jazz or classical
influences. But when Pierre Boulez records an album of Zappa music,
it’s classical music (Gracyk, 1996: 5).

Gracyk goes on to argue that ‘when Brandford
Marsalis
releases an album, it is jazz. But when he appears on a Grateful Dead
album (Without a Net 1991)
he is playing rock, even if he is playing
exactly the same horn part that he might play on one of his own
albums’ (Gracyk, 1996: 5) The musical tradition of the
artist
has a profound impact on how their music is interpreted, and Frank
Zappa for the greater part of his career was unquestionably part of the
rock tradition. However, the calculated way he managed his musical
output enabled him to eventually be accepted as part of the
classical/”new music” tradition, effectively
metamorphosing into what was originally his alter ego, undergoing a
similar, albeit more profound process that The Beatles undertook when
maturing from a rock & roll band, to that of a rock band. In a
recent interview, David Butcher, chief executive of the Britton
Symphonia, recently compared Zappa’s output to
Stravinsky’s, stating:

The biggest compliment I can pay is to think of
a
composer like Stravinsky, who wrote in many, many different styles. You
had the
“Rite of Spring” Stravinsky, you had the
neo-classical Stravinsky, you had the late twelve tone Stravinsky, and
you could almost mirror that in terms of Frank’s serious
output. But I would say like Stravinsky, whether it’s very
jazz based or rock based, or whether it’s dissonant and
Varèse-like – you know it’s Frank Zappa
(Greer 2006).

A recent article in The New York times described Zappa
as ‘an
outsider artist eventually discovered and embraced by the establishment
without ever losing his outsider cachet’ (Midgette 2007).
Specifically discussing a night of his chamber music performed at the
Millar Theatre by The
Fireworks Ensemble, this comment succinctly
describes how Zappa’s legacy has successfully negotiated both
rock and classical traditions. This becomes even clearer when we
realise that Zappa’s entire compositional portfolio can be
regarded as a single profound philosophical gesture, which he entitled
the Big Note.
When discussing his entire output in 1968 he revealed
both his allegiance to musique
concrète and the gesture in
question, commenting

All the material in the albums is organically
related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor
blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different
order, it still would make one piece of music you can listen
too” (Slaven, 2002: 121).

Zappa continued with this philosophical perspective
throughout his
career, and would frequently not only refer to and rearrange earlier
compositions, but actually include
previously recorded material into
his current works. When ratifying the artistic merit of this process he
commented upon the theatrical nature of what could be considered
“self plagiarism”, stating that when “a
novelist invents a character. If the character is a good one, he takes
on a life of his own. Why should he get to go to only one
party?” (Zappa, 1989: 139). This was often the fundamental
philosophy behind the countless re-arrangements Zappa made of his
works, prompting him to incorporate the terminology of Project/Object
when describing the perceived difference between the completed work of
art in a recording (Object), and the ongoing process of redefining it
(Project).

He extended these
conceptual continuity gestures
–
a term first mentioned on side 2 of Lumpy Gravy (1968)
– to
his entire creative output (including his album covers and videos) in a
clear demonstration that he considered individual works of art as being
in a process of constant development. He commented:

In the case of the Project/Object, you
may find
a little poodle
over
here, a little blow job
over there, etc., etc. I am not obsessed by poodles
or blow jobs,
however; these words (and others of equal
insignificance), along with pictorial images and melodic themes, recur
throughout the albums, interviews, films, videos (and this book) for no
other reason than to unify the “collection.”
(Zappa, 1989: 140).

Zappa’s Big
Note, included another self titled
gesture
entitled Xenochrony
(Etymology deriving from the Greek words xeno
(strange or alien) and chrono (time)). This was exclusively a studio
based technique that enabled him to horizontally fuse disparate
recordings from unrelated time and places, consequently enabling him to
superimpose “unrelated” guitar solos, usually from
live recordings, into his studio projects. After initially
experimenting with the technique on Captain Beefheart’s
“The Blimp” (Captain Beefheart 1969), it became a
pervasive creative aspect of his portfolio, resulting in numerous
recordings fusing the scientific perfection of his studio work, with
the free flowing improvisation he was able to initiate in a live
environment, a technique especially pervasive in Joe’s
Garage: Acts I, II & III (1979). It is important
to verify that
when using xenochronic techniques, Zappa was interested not only in
fusing recordings from different times and places, but aligning musical
structures from completely incongruous compositions. The effect of this
angular gesture often has a profound effect on the listener, in effect
accentuating the disparate locations and spaces the tracks were
originally recording in.

As outlined above, Zappa clearly received a creative
energy from his
audience, and regarded them as part of the two-way “gestural
interconversion” process indicated earlier. Indeed his
audience not only interpreted the pervasive gestural codes inherent in
any live performance such as dress code, movement and sound, but as
demonstrated on numerous tracks such as “Make A Sex
Noise” (Zappa 1992), were often incorporated into the
creative process, often being asked to interpret similar hand signals
to his musicians, and in effect becoming an integral part of
the work
of art. Zappa guitarist Steve Vai commented

He would give audiences noises to make, in
various
sections of the
audience. So then he would create this piece of music by having
everybody watch him, and he would point, or give a cue, then he would
point to the audience, and he would just, you know, wield his baton
around, and next thing you know you’ve got this very unique
interesting kind of a composition that involves the entire audience and
the band and everything. It was nice and it was different every night
(Greer 2006).

Research has indicated that if performers are sensitive
to the gestural
codes emanating from their audiences, it has a direct positive effect
on their creative output (Davidson, 2002: 146), and Frank Zappa
appreciated this factor more than most. Perhaps this is the reason he
preferred to incorporate live guitar solos into his studio work? When
compiling the album series You
Can’t Do That On Stage
Anymore, Zappa skilfully aligned recordings from his
entire career to
date, this time vertically, and to paraphrase him, “without
overdubs”. Regarding the entire series, he clearly verifies
that “This collection is not chronological”, going
on to confirm that “any band from any year can be (and often
is) edited to the performance of any other band from any other year
– sometimes in the middle of a song” (Zappa 1991).
This album series is effectively not only an astonishing technological
display of Zappa’s studio skills, but a realisation of his Big Note
philosophy, each recording representing a
“utopian” live concert as seen from
Zappa’s perspective. Effectively aligning disparate time and
places into a series of individual artistic gestures as represented on
each album. It could be argued that a genuine live
“concert” has to be derived from a congruent time
and place. However studio technology has made it common practice for
musicians to experiment with these parameters in both live and studio
performance situations, effectively ensuring that errors are
eliminated, and that all instruments are appropriately balanced. Zappa
however seems to accept the lack of authenticity his studio work
attribute these recordings. The album series is consequently an
extremely ironic gesture, acknowledging the fact that it would indeed
be impossible to achieve the variance of recording venue, time, and
band personal without studio technology. Zak would describe individual
tracks on these albums as artefacts, pointing to the “shifts
in perspective that a record makes available through its manipulation
of [synchronic and diachronic] four dimensional space” (Zak,
2001: 144). Incorporating Zak’s model, these track based
artefacts themselves become diachronic and synchronic gestures for more
subtle artefacts ranging from conceptual
continuity clues, to fused
performances from disparate time and place (“Lonesome Cowboy
Nando” (Zappa 1992) consists of two takes recorded seventeen
years apart ), to performances of historical significance, to band
based folklore. As Susan Fast pointed out in her monograph on Led
Zeppelin (2001), stylistic diversity is important to fans, as it is
indicative of the artist’s “willingness to grow
musically, to take risks, and especially to shy away from the easy
option of repeating themselves” (Fast 2001: 20).
Fast’s argument that these paradigms “run against
capitalist marketplace interests” (Fast, 2001: 22) is
particularly pertinent to Zappa, who as immortalised in the title of
David Walley’s early monograph - No Commercial Potential: The
Saga of Frank Zappa (1972), was explicit regarding the
‘non
commercial’ intent of his music, which is in turn reflective
of his non conformist political and social views. When discussing the
reception of these traits, Moore asserted that competency in discerning
musical styles derives from “the [listeners] ability to
distinguish normative from unusual exemplars, and to make predictions
of the likelihood of certain events in real-time listening”
(Moore, 2001: 26). However, this article proposes that this approach is
not possible with Zappa’s output, where even superficial
analysis confirms that the only predicable event is the unexpected.
This is true not only in the chronological connection between albums
(as stated above), but also in the diachronic and synchronic
construction of individual tracks and albums. As Zappa stated

My idea of a good time is a really simple
minded song
followed by
something that is out to lunch, and then back to simplicity again, and
then back out to lunch again. That’s the way the world really
is… (Zappa, 1989: 97)

It is important to verify that this essay does not
suggest that Zappa
is the first (or indeed the last) musician to appropriate western
classical music into their ‘centrifugal’ style.
Musicians such as Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Stan Kenton and Claude
Thornhill all experimented with merging jazz with classical paradigms
in the first half of the twentieth century. These experiments cumulated
in the formation of the term Third
Stream in the early 1950s, whose
advocates considered the merging of classical and jazz styles to be an
important artistic and cultural development for the art form. As
discussed later, this postmodern merging of ‘high’
and ‘low’ art was also pervasive in the
developmental stages of rock music, and as Walser correctly noted
regarding the analysis of these divides, it is not uncommon to attempt
a legitimisation of popular culture by “applying the
standards of “high” culture, with the assumptions
that underpin cultural value judgements left untouched”
(Walser, 1993: 59). If this assumption were applied to Zappa, despite
the complexity of his work, his often sarcastic, ironic and anti
establishment regard of the ‘seriousness’ of music
would be omitted, as would his contempt for the audiences who received
it. When discussing the use of ‘Art’ music in the
work of Elvis Costello, Brackett observed that this lack of distinction
between high and low culture has a tendency to make high cultural
paradigms more accessible to “rebellious youth at the
margins” who may otherwise have considered it snobbish or
elitist (Brackett, 2001: 168). Zappa makes his opinion perfectly clear
when discussing the reality of the Classical period in
autobiography:

I find music of the classical period boring
because it
reminds me of
‘painting by
numbers.’ There are certain things
composers of that period were not allowed to do because they were
considered to be outside the boundaries of the industrial regulations
which determined whether the piece was a symphony, a sonata or a whatever.
(Zappa, 1989: 186).

When comparing the glorified reception of this music to
the formulaic
nature of its harmonic paradigms, he is equally disdainful, believing
that ‘many compositions that have been accepted as
“GREAT ART” through the years reek of these hateful
practices’ (Zappa, 1989: 187) believing that
“People who think that classical music is somehow more
elevated than ‘radio music’ should take a look at
the forms involved -- and at who’s paying the
bills” (Zappa, 1989: 186).

Zappa’s realism regarding the commercial
constraints placed
on classical music, in addition to the detached and humorous way he
presented his work is indicative of the lack differentiation between
‘high’ and ‘low’ art outlined
above, and his involvement with twentieth-century art music was always
ironic in nature. When discussing the appropriation of classical music
with Heavy Metal, Walser discusses how Afro-American jazz musicians
such Duke Ellington attempted to defeat “racist
essentialism” by proving they can engage with classical
music. He argues that the ‘prestige’ Ellington
achieved through positioning himself as a classically influenced
composer was partially responsible for his influential role in gaining
respect of African-American music (Walser, 1993: 61). Walser continues
to discuss how guitarists such Richie Blackmore, Edward Van Halen,
Randy Roades and Yngwie Malmsteen pushed the theoretical, technical,
and pedagogical boundaries of Heavy Metal by incorporating the
virtuosity and compositional traits associated with the Baroque and
Classical periods. Although a noted and influential guitarist, Zappa
was
first and foremost a composer whose portfolio displays unusual
intertextual depth, and who like Ellington engrained a calculated mix
of innovation and tradition in his music, which consequently played an
important role in gaining ‘prestige’ for the rock
genre.

Zappa is an interesting example of a
“rock” artist
whose compositional portfolio has ontological interest from the
perspective of both the score and
the record. Although his employment
of xenochronic and cut and paste studio artefacts/gestures are radical,
they are perceived as being very much part of the rock tradition, where
technology is used as a compositional tool, often enabling new works to
emerge from independently conceived ideas. More experimental examples
from the canon such as U2’s Achtung Baby (1991)
and Neil
Young’s Arc
(1991) (Gracyk, 1996: 49), can be placed in
context when compared to Zappa’s more stylistically
adventurous experiments on albums such as Lumpy Gravy (1968)
and
Civilisation Phaze 3 (1993), as well as individual tracks
such as
“The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny” (Mothers
of Invention 1967) and “Dwarf Nebula Processional March
& Dwarf Nebula” (Zappa 1970): where Zappa seems to
rely on influences such as Pierre Schaeffer and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen
more than rock. The pervasive use of multi tracking in rock music was
indeed preceded by the musique
concrète experiments of the
late 1940s, rock serving as a conduit through which the techniques
could be experienced via low
culture, it being the first commercial
music form to rely on the recording process to develop specific
works.
During this process, the completed work of art is often labelled
retrospectively, when the recording process is complete, the performers
of individual tracks not necessarily being aware of the precise details
of what they are recording. These paradigms undertook a new dimension
in some of Zappa’s recorded work, where any recorded element
of his previous portfolio could reoccur in future projects. As well as subtly
incorporating material from pervious albums into his current
recordings, in the tradition of the compositional practices of Bebop,
Zappa also used entire rhythm tracks as the basis for new works. His
satire of Broadway musical form Thing-Fish
(1984) is probably the most
notable example of this process, where the majority of the songs were
either directly taken from earlier recordings, or in the case of
“Galloot Update” and “You Are What You
Is”, lyrically revised versions of earlier songs. The fact
that these songs have independent titles proves that Zappa considers
the recordings not to be arrangements
of earlier works, but
independent, albeit derivative recordings. This is similar to the
process incorporated by surrealist artist René Magritte, who
prided himself on giving new meanings to familiar ideas. For example
his The Man With The
Bowler Hat (1964) and The
Son of Man (1964) are
identical apart from the artefacts covering the subjects’
face (a bird and apple respectively), which are in turn developments of
his earlier work Golconda
(1953) and Mysteries of
the Horizon (1955).
Like Zappa, he clearly regards aspects of his work not as finished
products, but as part of an ongoing process that can be developed over
many years. As discussed above, without an overarching gesture such as
the Big Note,
it would be easy to interpret Zappa’s
“sampling” practices as at best self-plagiarism,
but individuals taking this view are missing the profound conceptual
continuity gesture which is so integral to his work. In
addition to his
creative gestures when using studio technology, Zappa’s
confluence of high and low culture is accentuated by his pervasive use
of notation when scoring his band and orchestral pieces. This results
in his portfolio having analytical interest from the perspective of
both traditional musicology, where ontological priority focuses on the
organization of rhythm and pitch, and what Allan Moore entitles
“the primary text” (Moore, 2001: 1-8), the
importance of the musical sounds inherent in the records themselves.
Moore goes on to compartmentalise the differences between the
transmission of European art music and rock, presenting a score vs.
recording divide, (Moore, 2001: 34). He continues to verify that
“European art music is performed with reference to a
pre-existent score, which is accepted as an encoded version of the
sounds intended by the composer. [Alternatively], [t]he rock score,
where one exists, is actually a transcription of what has already been
performed and produced” (ibid). Zappa’s holistic
portfolio consists of both of these paradigms, consequently containing
what Gracyk describes as ontological “thickness” in
both areas (Gracyk, 1996: 31)

Having been posthumously accepted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame
in 1995, Zappa is now firmly established within this tradition, and has
been a major influence regarding broadening the stylistic
pre-requisites of the Rock genre. However, since his death in 1993 he
has increasingly been accepted as a composer of concert music: one of
the final albums produced in his lifetime, The Yellow Shark
(1993) with
the Ensemble Modern, has resulted in numerous concert and radio
performances and a subsequent album Ensemble Modern Plays Frank
Zappa:
Greggery Peccary and other persuasions (2004). If we are
to accept
Echard’s definition of tradition as “a complex
discursive category which correlates bundles of generic and stylistic
features with specific social groups, places, and histories”
(Echard, 2005: 62), then Zappa’s phenomena can be considered
to have gone full circle, and realised his childhood intentions to be
accepted as a serious
composer.

Conclusion

This essay does not propose that Zappa was the only rock
based musician
operating on the boarders of high and low art forms during the late
1960’s – early 1970’s. Artists such as
Deep Purple (Concerto
for Group and Orchestra 1969), ELP (Pictures at
am Exhibition 1971), Yes, The Moody Blues (Days of Future Passed
1967)
and of course The Beatles (Sgt.
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967)
all experimented with the Rock/Classical divide with far greater
commercial success than Zappa. None, however, engaged with the long
term consistency, unpretentious complexity, and detached
irony/strategic anti-essentialism as Zappa, who firmly believed that
music, regardless of its complexity should be for ‘purely for
entertainment’.

Despite the eclectic nature of Zappa’s music,
and the
numerous ways it can be interpreted, his portfolio can still be
regarded as having a unified idiolect, which is ironically aligned to
his ability to incorporate complex musical and theatrical gestures in
his work. Although many of his early albums were originally interpreted
as “ironic” and highly allegorical statements,
retrospective analysis does allude to clear “strategic anti
essentialist” tendencies that potentially provide insights
not only to his artistic predisposition, but his personal character.
This paper proposes that although Zappa’s engagement with
classical music was initially interpreted as an ironic gesture by his
audience, it gradually became more
“anti-essentialist” in nature, as he unashamedly
and consistently engaged with his life long interest in “art
music”. This is verified by his wife Gail Zappa, who recently
confirmed that his long-term engagement with Rock music was unashamedly
used to finance his more orchestral ambitions (Greer 2006). It is also
noted that characters portrayed in pieces such as “The
Torture Never Stops” (Zappa 1976) and “Wet T-Shirt
Nite” (Zappa 1979) could be interpreted as voyeuristic
extensions of his own personality, or are they examples of
socio-political critique: Gestus
as it is used in Bertolt
Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt?
What we can now verify without
vacillation is that what appeared to be a “high art alter
ego” in the early part of his career was, in fact, a serious
twentieth-century composer jostling for supremacy and peer recognition.
Posthumous albums such as Everything
is Healing Nicely (1999), Strictly
Genteel: A Classical Introduction to Frank Zappa (1997),
and Ensemble
Modern plays Frank Zappa: Greggery Peccary and other persuasions
(2004)
have gone some way to redefine centrifugally his music away from its
original reception as Rock. At the same time, Zappa has also been
reclaimed as a major influence on the Jazz-Rock movement of the early
1970s, again presenting an ironic perspective to his famous maxim
“Jazz is not dead – it just smells
funny”. Frank Zappa, however, is dead but he continues to be
a post-modern figure who defies definition. In Zappa’s
anti-Broadway musical Thing-Fish
(1984), the eponymous character
invites us to “Twist ‘n frugg in an arrogant
gesture to THE BEST of what de 20th Century have to offer”:
This seems an apt description of what Zappa himself set out to do,
although, in retrospect, his gestures now look less arrogant than
profoundly and unreservedly ironic.

Notes

[1]Lipsitz uses this term to describe
a process in which artists “[take] on disguises in order to
express indirectly parts of their identity that might be too
threatening to express directly” (Lipsitz 1994, 62).

[2]Throughout this article we are
adhering to Echard’s description of tradition as “a
complex discursive category which correlates bundles of generic and
stylistic features with specific social groups, places and
histories” (Echard 2005, 58).

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